The Third Smartphone Ecosystem Is Ending With A Whimper

The market share of devices powered by Windows Phone fell below 3% in the second quarter, according to IDC.

Bloomberg News

Remember the emerging third smartphone ecosystem? It’s disappearing.

Telecom executives for years have trumpeted the need for a new cellphone platform to provide a counterweight to the dominance of Google’s Android and Apple’s IOS. Maybe it could be BlackBerry. Or maybe Windows.

Or maybe not. According to the data from IDC, the two top players are only getting stronger, grabbing 96.4% of global smartphone shipments in the second quarter, up from 92.6% a year ago.

Windows Phone’s share of shipments fell to 2.5% of the total from 3.4% a year ago, as shipments dropped by more than 9%. BlackBerry’s share fell to 0.5% from 2.8% — below the market share of the “other” category — amid a total collapse in shipments.

The numbers bode poorly for Microsoft’s $9.5 billion acquisition of Nokia’s phone business, a move aimed at gaining greater control over the distribution of phones using Microsoft software. The software giant does have massive amounts of cash to throw at the problem, however, and new Chief Executive Satya Nadella has made mobile a priority.

IDC’s data shows that 7.4 million Windows Phone devices shipped in the second quarter, down from 8.2 million in the same period last year.

Android continues to dominate worldwide shipments, with 255.3 million devices in the second quarter and an 84.7% market share. Apple shipped 35.2 million iPhones, and its market share slipped to 11.7% from 13%. Lower-end devices drove Android, with 58.6% of all Android smartphones shipped costing less than $200, IDC said.

The notion of new operating systems hasn’t been abandoned. Tizen is being backed by big names like Samsung Electronics and Intel, but has failed to really get off the ground. Non-profit Mozilla continues to push its Firefox operating system, and Canonical makes a smartphone version open source operating system called Ubuntu.

Few people in the industry expect them to gain much ground. Even if they get the software right, they lack the selection of applications that drive loyalty to other platforms.